Tune into Science Friday today on WSQX from 2-4pm and learn how in California, monitoring marine protected areas can get expensive. Current efforts—which include underwater surveys conducted by scuba diving volunteers—have already cost the state $16 million, and in some places, there’s no funding left. But testing DNA in water samples could provide an effective alternative to more costly methods. KQED’s science and environment reporter, Lauren Sommer, discusses this story and other science news from the week.

Plus, when it comes to their diet, polar bears aren’t so finicky. Would they prefer a fatty ringed seal pup? Yes. But Robert Rockwell, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, explains in a new study in PLOS ONE that the longtime “flexible foragers” have incorporated snow geese, eggs, and caribou into their diet as the ice-free season increases in Canada’s western Hudson Bay. Rockwell reflects on the good and bad of polar bears’ ability to face climate change and discusses how the biggest threat to their livelihood might not just be warmer temperatures.
Produced by Becky Fogel, Production Assistant

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As Pennsylvania moves into the latter part of winter, 13,500 households that started the season without a safe source of heat still don’t have one. Data released Wednesday by Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission shows there are fewer homes without a utility heating service this winter compared to last year.

An environmental group says that Pennsylvania’s gas drilling industry is releasing much more methane into the atmosphere than the state is reporting. Scientists at the Environmental Defense Fund calculated Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale industry is emitting twice as much methane as companies are reporting to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.

KEYSTONE CROSSROADS - Pennsylvania’s congressional map has been recognized nationally as having some of the starkest examples of gerrymandering in the country, prompting both a state and a federal lawsuit in 2017. A three-judge panel in the federal case upheld the map as drawn by Republicans in 2011.

HARRISBURG, PA (WSKG) -- The deadline has come and gone to submit congressional map proposals that meet the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's new guidelines. When justices first declared the maps unconstitutional about four weeks ago, they ordered the GOP-controlled legislature and Democratic Governor Tom Wolf to negotiate a compromise on new ones.

Albany, NY (WSKG) - Some Democratic lawmakers are pushing for a measure that would make anonymous political ads on Facebook and other social media illegal. They say the ads are being abused to falsely represent their positions on issues.